I recently put several questions to you that were part of a survey of Baltimore residents -- bottom-line sorts of queries about whether you like your neighborhood and jurisdiction enough to recommend it to others. Almost 70 of you weighed in. Mostly city residents, as it happens -- so much for comparing and contrasting across the region!

Eight Baltimore County residents took part, which I decided is just enough to make a comparison not completely ridiculous. (Hey, a scientific survey this isn't.) Here are the results for the city and county:

How likely are you to ...

Recommend living in your neighborhood to friends?

Among city residents, 84 percent said "likely" or "very likely." Sixty-three percent of county residents said the same; the remainder opted for "not likely" or "not at all likely."

Recommend living in your jurisdiction to friends?

Continue reading "Survey results: Recommending where you live, or not" »

Posted by Jamie Smith Hopkins at 7:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Survey says ...
        

Baltimore is a dirty city with few good jobs. But it's also a green city whose residents love their neighborhoods, public parks and libraries. Their biggest worry is crime, but they consider their own blocks quite safe.

One part of the survey asked for bottom-line reactions: How likely are you to recommend living in your neighborhood to friends, recommend living in Baltimore, recommend buying a home there? Would you recommend the city as a place to raise children or to retire? And how likely are you to move out of the city in the next one to three years?

Good questions. I'm interested in how you would answer them about your neighborhood and jurisdiction, whether you live in the city or somewhere else. So: survey time!

Continue reading "How do you like your neighborhood?" »

Posted by Jamie Smith Hopkins at 7:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (8)
Categories: Survey says ...
        

Most of you think buyers have the upper hand in this housing market. Just not tremendously so.

Just under two-thirds of you obliging folks who took the first-ever Wonk survey this week say the supply vs. demand situation is tipped in favor of buyers. Many think it's "somewhat" so. Less than a quarter of everyone surveyed opted for "heavily" in buyers' favor.

This doesn't mean the rest say sellers have it easy. Just 9 percent think the market is tipped in favor of sellers (and half of those folks say only "somewhat" so).

Fourteen percent believe the market is basically balanced between buyers and sellers. 

And another 14 percent aren't sure.

In case you're wondering, 44 people took the survey. Thanks, guys!

And because it's a survey rather than a poll, we don't have to guess how homeowners and renters weighed in, or wonder whether the people who say it's a sellers market are sellers or buyers. This is the breakdown:

Continue reading "Your take on supply vs. demand" »

Posted by Jamie Smith Hopkins at 7:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)
Categories: Survey says ...
        

Not a poll this Sunday. A quick check-the-box survey with four questions.

Go on, try it out! First Wonk survey ever! (Note to the unlucky few of you with insanely restrictive work computer settings: It's powered by Google Docs.)

Continue reading "Supply vs. demand in your neck of the woods" »

Posted by Jamie Smith Hopkins at 7:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Survey says ...
        

Most homeowners think their homes are worth less now than a year ago, but only one in five is expecting more drops in value here on out.

That's what people told real estate site Zillow in a July poll released today. The company's take on the results? "Hope springs eternal."

The Northeast, which includes Maryland in this survey, is more optimistic than average. Seventeen percent of homeowners polled expect their homes will drop in value in the next six months, compared with 19 percent nationwide. Thirty-eight percent of Northeasterners think their home values will rise.

(Midwesterners were the most pessimistic in this survey. But still, three in four are counting on stable or rising values for their own homes.) 

In a press release, Zillow suggested that it thinks homeowners are being a bit too rosy. Here's a statement from Zillow's chief economist, Stan Humphries:

“While their perceptions of past declines in their homes’ values have gotten more realistic over the past year, each quarter homeowners express the opinion that the worst is behind them. Unfortunately, that has not been the case thus far and it’s far from clear that it’s the case today. Despite some signs of slowing depreciation in many markets in the second quarter – the height of the 2009 home-buying season – there are many market fundamentals that will challenge home prices in the near-term: high for-sale inventory levels, foreclosures, negative equity, and price-to-rent ratios that still aren’t back to historical levels yet.”

On the Zillow blog, the company's vice president of communications wonders: "Are homeowners on to something the numbers aren’t showing? Or is this simply a coping strategy after many months of watching equity shrink away?"

The Zillow poll also asked if people thought their homes had lost value in the last year. Among Northeastern residents polled, 56 percent said yes. Zillow estimates that values actually dropped for 77 percent in the region. 

If you're chomping at the bit for the margin of error, I'm afraid I have to disappoint: Zillow said the poll, conducted online by Harris Interactive, "is not based on a probability sample and therefore no estimates of theoretical sampling error can be calculated."

Say -- let's do a real quick poll of our own:

Posted by Jamie Smith Hopkins at 7:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)
Categories: Survey says ...
        

We all hear that layoffs and salary reductions are bad for homeowners and will probably keep foreclosure numbers from dropping anytime soon. But the cuts aren't good for renters, either. And what's not good for renters -- in this case -- is bad news for landlords.

Half of U.S. property managers are having more trouble filling their units with "qualified renters," according to a new TransUnion survey. Eight out of 10 say they're worried about how the rest of the year will go. (TransUnion, a credit-information company that sells renter-screening services, said it surveyed more than 870 property managers last month.)

But what about the people who got foreclosed on? Aren't they in need of a place to rent? As it happens, only half the surveyed property managers reported an increase over last year in applicants leaving foreclosed properties. TransUnion speculates that "many consumers coming from these circumstances are moving in with family members or friends to share expenses."

Local landlords, how are things going for you? (Come on, now. I know some of you are reading. Well -- maybe not on the Fourth of July, but I'll wait.)

Renters, have you needed to make a change -- moving to a cheaper apartment, bringing in a roommate, going back to live with parents -- to deal with tighter finances? (Or are things going so well that you're moving to a nicer place?)

Posted by Jamie Smith Hopkins at 7:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)
Categories: Landlording, Renting, Survey says ...
        

Zillow asked homeowners to weigh in on their property values, as I noted last week. A new survey from real estate site HomeGain gets Realtors' opinions about prices.

You can find the national results here. HomeGain provided me with Maryland data, which suggests that opinions about home values are continuing to split down the middle -- sellers on one side, buyers on the other. (Of the 1,150 agents surveyed nationally, 26 were from Maryland.)

Eight in 10 Maryland Realtors polled say their homeowner clients lost value in the last year, but those clients are more optimistic about prices than the agents. Two-thirds of Realtors surveyed say the average client thinks his home is worth more than the recommended listing price. (A sizable number of agents report that the average client believes his home is worth 10 to 20 percent more.)

Two-thirds of agents say their buyer clients, meanwhile, think listing prices are too high. The most popular choice -- chosen by 45 percent of those surveyed -- is "overpriced by less than 10 percent."

That split is after a number of agents have convinced sellers to list at a price that's lower than what the owners thought their homes were worth.

Strip away all the economic issues -- income vs. prices, recession, credit crunch -- and this difference of opinion between would-be buyers and sellers seems a key explanation for why the number of Maryland home sales is still dropping.

The Maryland agents surveyed by HomeGain were themselves split on what will happen to home values in the next six months. Almost four in 10 expect decreases. Just over four in 10 expect no change. And the rest -- 18 percent -- expect increases.

As for President Obama's stimulus efforts, half of the surveyed Realtors think they've had no effect on home prices. Thirty-four percent believe they've stabilized prices, 13 percent believe they've decreased prices and just 3 percent think they've increased prices.

The poll that went live on this blog over the weekend -- still going, vote now! -- is modeled after HomeGain's question about how buyers view listing prices. Once our poll has been up for a week, I'll show how the results compare.

Here, of course, polltakers are a varied bunch -- buyers, sellers and people (renters and homeowners) who aren't going anywhere. So far, nobody thinks asking prices are low. Even the sellers.

Posted by Jamie Smith Hopkins at 9:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)
Categories: Survey says ...
        

Zillow says it found a significant amount of "shadow inventory" waiting in the wings -- homes that people want to sell but haven't marketed yet. Almost one in three homeowners polled said "they would be at least 'somewhat likely' to put their homes on the market in the next 12 months if they saw signs of a real estate market turnaround," according to the poll.

Stan Humphries, Zillow's vice president of data and analytics, had this to say in a press release:

While homeowners are now more realistic when looking backward, they are still pretty starry-eyed when looking forward with three out of four homeowners believing that their own homes' prices will increase or be flat over the next six months. Unfortunately, there are few markets we expect to perform this well. ...

With almost a third of homeowners poised to jump into the market at the first sign of stabilization, this could create a steady stream of new inventory adding to already record-high inventory levels, thus keeping downward pressure on home prices.

The Northeast, which includes Maryland in this poll, was the most optimistic. It was the only region with less than a quarter of polled homeowners expecting continued declines in value.

Zillow said its poll was conducted online by Harris Interactive last month, with about 2,100 adults participating. Wonks eager to know the margin of error will be disappointed: "This online survey is not based on a probability sample and therefore no estimates of theoretical sampling error can be calculated," the company says in its press release.

Posted by Jamie Smith Hopkins at 10:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)
Categories: Survey says ...